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Marketing With Engagement Devices
Most salespeople will tell you that one of the most difficult parts of the sales process is getting past people’s initial defenses.
We all have a powerful force field we can project quickly that shields us from unwanted sales attempts. It’s an interesting psychological super power we all develop.
Of course some customers immediately want what we have – and they know, like, and trust us, so selling to them is easy. But other people aren’t interested and are much harder to work with. How do you get them to consider your offer?
The Old-School Marketers’ Trick
Turns out marketers have been trying to solve this problem for a long-time. One easy (and ethical) technique they’ve discovered is the “engagement device”.
It is a device that gets prospects to engage with you or your offer. If done well it allows the prospect to learn about your product without getting defensive.
You can’t (and shouldn’t try to) sell stuff to people who don’t want it. But you can (and should) allow people to know about your product or service so they can decide if it’s right for them.
The Best Engagement Devices
There are a few engagement devices that work incredibly well because they not only get you into a conversation with the prospect; they also give you further insight into your prospects opinions, attitudes, and interests. It’s a win-win. When you know people’s opinion you can refine your product or service for them.
Let’s look at three examples of the best engagement tools and how to apply them to your situation.
#1 Online Polls – Doing an online poll as part of the sales process is an easy and fun engagement device. You can use www.polldaddy.com for free and you don’t even need a website to use it.
If you read my special email last week, or visited https://makesellgrow.com you probably noticed I’m using several polls to collect people’s opinion about my newest ebook. I asked people to help me decide on the cover color, title and sub-title. Here is what one of the polls looked like:
I did this because 1.) I really needed the help to decide on the final choices 2.) I wondered what would be the most appealing to most people. 3.) I wanted a way to discuss my new book project in a way that was engaging.
#2 Comment Contests – You’ll also notice that I added a comment contest to the article with the polls. This had the extra benefit of getting people to share their opinion in writing and also explain their thinking in a more in-depth way. Offering a fun reward is also a nice way to boost participation.
#3 Surveys – Doing a survey of your existing or prospective customers gets them involved in the process in a fantastic way. You can use a site like www.surveymonkey.com for free.
How To Use These Methods
So at this point you might be thinking – I sell doll clothes on Etsy, how am I supposed to use engagement devices to help sell my items? The short answer is – use the engagement devices wherever you are communicating with prospects and customers.
Email: The best option is probably email marketing. Etsy allows you to collect email addresses via your “About” page, and they explain those details here.
Of course we’ve outlined our email marketing strategies previously in our Email Marketing Power ebook, (it’s just .99 cents on Amazon).
Social media: Facebook is another great way to use engagement devices. Of course we’ve always loved Youtube for contests. You could say a design contest is a form of a comment contest – and it is certainly an engagement device.
Blog: You can also use these types of tools on your blog. Don’t have one? Consider using Wix.com, Weebly.com, or WordPress.com – all of them are free – and for some reason they all start with the letter “W”. I’m not sure why.
Bottomline – get people to join you in a conversation about your product today with engagement devices.
Do You Have A Question?
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Jason & Cinnamon